Burn or Strike, Ashes
by bleachlover1999
Summary: Chapter 1: The first time they actually have a conversation, stuck in a dog pile, Jackie wasn't impressed. Collection of One-shots. Always complete.
1. Not Impressed

A/N: I have to say that the only reason why I wrote this was because I was pissed that not a lot of people were writing Harvar x Jacqueline stories… Then again, I do things most of the time with 'being pissed' as my motivation…

And yes, weird pairing, I know, but I like the idea of someone cool like Harvar paired up with a fiery person like Jacqueline. I seem to like those kinds of pairings… oh well, opposites attract.

FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE, BLASTOFF!

* * *

The first time they actually had a conversation, Jackie wasn't impressed.

Just how they ended up sandwiched together underneath Ox and Kim, she wasn't sure. It _may_ have had something to do with the fact that the Kim was busy yelling at Ox, who was fawning over her, their partners trying to break them up, resulting in them all tumbling down several flights of stairs. Jackie swore that those accursed steps had appeared out of nowhere… but in any case, she wasn't going to try pacifying dramas between Ox and Kim anymore with him around.

Who was 'him', you might ask? Why, who else other than Harvar D. Éclair, the very boy immobilized underneath her?

Anyways, back to the situation.

"I told you before, don't do that again! It's embarrassing!"

"But how could I, my fair lady? A king should always welcome his queen back grandly!"

"Who the hell's your queen?!"

"Gaack!"

Kim and Ox causing drama Jackie could put up, but not Kim and Ox causing drama _on top_ of her, especially when Harvar was stuck under the two with her.

"Stop elbowing me!" Jackie hissed at him, barely able to breath under the combined weight of Ox and Kim's foot (currently stomping on a shiny bald head).

"That won't be possible anytime soon unless you stop squashing my shoulder."

"Grr, aren't you men supposed to be stupid, blundering, muscle-brained oxen?" Jackie grumbled, struggling to wriggle her left leg from the body pile, only to dig her knee into Harvar's back.

"Was that supposed to be a pun?" He asked, referring to the moron still spewing disgustingly sweet love proclamation at her partner.

"No, but he's just as heavy!"

"You're not the one stuck at the bottom."

Giving up on trying to beat the boy in an argument, Jackie renewed her efforts to escape. Anything to get away from the stubborn git under her.

Abandoning her attempts to free her left leg (which was still being pressed painfully against Harvar's back), Jackie rolled her sore shoulders in vain, as her poor right arm was pinned underneath Ox's back, grunting when she felt the elbow against her stomach jab her again. Harvar's arm was restrained against his chest, against Jackie's stomach, hence the elbow jabbing her.

Jackie conjured up some colorful words to mutter under her breath when Ox flailed his arms around, crushing Jackie's weight onto Harvar's shoulder. "Ugh, how do you put up with this love-sick idiot?"

"It's my duty."

"Your duty? Is that really all Ox is to you? Not a friend? So all those times when you were worried or happy for him were just part of your 'duty'?" Jackie looked at him incredulously, and she would've ranted a lot more if she didn't realize how close her face was to Harvar's.

"…"

"…"

And if you thought that Jackie was blushing, you're dead wrong. Instead, she raised her stomach's body temperature, not hot enough to burn Harvar's arm, but enough to make it uncomfortably warm. Still, his face expression remained neutral, and not a single complaint escaped his lips.

Jackie rolled her eyes, through with this robotic boy. "Gah, screw this. Just help me get these two deadweights off."

"I could, but I don't think that you'll like my method."

"Really now," Jackie raised an eyebrow at him. "Try me."

He did exactly that, and true to his words, Jackie didn't like his method. Not one bit.

"Fuuuuuccckkk!" She yelped, jumping a foot in to the air with her black hair sticking straight up. Kim and Ox shared similar reactions, only minus the swearing. Ox immediately began fussing over Kim (offering to check if she was hurt), triggering an onslaught of non-stop shouting aimed at him ('What are you, a pervert?! There's no way that I'm letting you see under my shirt!'). At least they were fighting on the ground instead of Jackie and Harvar.

Speaking of him…

Jackie rounded on the culprit, catching a quick glimpse of amusement in his visor-hidden eyes. "The hell was that for?"

He shrugged in response, fixing his rumpled clothes. "I told you that you wouldn't like it."

"Who would like being zapped by electricity?!"

"Exactly my point. You didn't like it."

Jackie groaned, slapping herself on the forehead. "You know what, you're hopeless. Come on Kim, enough with the flirting."

Kim struggled against Jackie's grip, still tugging on one of Ox's 'pillars', yelling defiantly, "Let me go, Jackie! This goddamn fool needs some sense beaten into him -"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure, but that can wait. I'm hungry and you know that I burn everything I try to cook."

Kim huffed and finally let go of Ox. "I'll beat you to the ground when I see you tomorrow."

"I'll take everything you give me!"

Like she said earlier, lovesick. Jackie also couldn't help but notice that Kim said 'when' instead of 'if', but she didn't say anything about it.

"Jacqueline."

"What?" Jackie didn't stop walking, but she threw the question/response at Harvar over her shoulder.

"About your question earlier…"

Jackie didn't even realize that Harvar had caught up to them until he was right behind her.

"Being a weapon and comrade to him will always come first, but he is also my friend. And who knows… you might be a friend too." And with a quick zap to her arm – right where she had sort-of burned Harvar – he was gone.

* * *

"What was that?" Ox shot Harvar a strange look, confused about what his partner had said.

Said boy merely shrugged, turning to go somewhere, maybe to disappear on one of his random walks. "Nothing."

Ox hesitated for a moment before falling in step with Harvar. There was no prying anything out of him when he didn't want to answer. He, however, missed a rare smile playing on his friend's lips.

* * *

"What was that?" Kim shot Jackie a suspicious look, but she'd only heard what Harvar said and didn't notice the zap he'd gave Jackie.

Jackie finally let go of Kim's arm and stomped past her. "Nothing!"

Kim heaved a sigh and walked alongside Jackie. She knew to let Jackie cool down before questioning her. She, however, missed the blush spreading across her friend's cheeks.

Fine, so maybe Jackie was just a little bit impressed.


	2. Hair

A/N: Just can't stay away from this couple~

And… Uh… I choose you!

(Gah, someone please give me suggestions on how to start a story without looking like a fool)

((Then again, being silly is part of my charm)

**(((Search up the Camellia flower's meaning after you finish reading the story)))**

**()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()**

Jackie was leaning against an empty hall's wall, doing some 'deep internal thinking'. Or, as other people put it, sulking.

With a pair of scissors and a bunch of flowers in her hands.

"I'm going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm not going to do it," Jackie muttered under her breath as she viciously tore petal after petals of red from the bunch of flowers in her hand. Not-so-small piles of flowers corpses were littered around her feet on the ground, a result of her pulling petals off non-stop for 10 minutes.

And even when several petals began burning because of the flickering flames licking at her fingers, caused by her faltering control over her emotions, Jackie didn't stop. It was her fault, her fault that Kim was injured even if it was only a cut. But what if that cut had been made on her neck instead of her shoulder? It could've hit a main artery, Kim could've died, and it would've all been Jackie's fault.

"I'm going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm not going to do it –"

"Do I even want to know what's going on?"

Too deeply engrossed in her petal-pulling, Jackie barely acknowledged Harvar's question. "Go away if you're only here to be as annoying as you normally are. I'm in the middle of making a decision that will affect me and Kim's life."

The ever unemotional boy merely tilted his head slightly to one side and watched her in silence.

"I'm going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do it – agh, goddamn it!" Jackie roared angrily and threw the petal-less flower onto the ground, violently crushing it with her sneakers.

The same thing happened over and over again with varying results until Jackie's supply of flowers dwindled to three.

Jackie groaned and flopped down onto the piles of petals. "You know what, I'm going to take a break, this is too stressing. So, what're you doing here, aren't you and Ox stuck together at the hip?"

"He's busy with Kim."

"Oh, of course. We _did _just get back from a mission," Jackie realized, feeling stupid for not figuring it out earlier. "Shouldn't you be protecting him from Kim's wrath? I hate to say it, but Ox will let himself get beat into a bloody pulp before he actually defies Kim."

"No, he told me to let them have some private time."

"Your duty obsession again?" Jackie huffed, scraping flower pulp from the sole of her shoe.

"It's not an obsession." Harvar's tone indicated that the discussion was over and silence fell over the pair.

"…"

"…"

"So… You're not going to ask about what I was doing?"

Harvar, however, didn't even appreciate her attempt to start a conversation. "No."

Jackie groaned, putting her head on her knees, hugging them to herself. "I swear, you are the single most annoying person in the world who is allergic to conversations that consist of more than single word answers like 'oh', 'yes', or 'no'."

And as though to prove her point, Harvar gave her a simple, "Maybe."

Once again, Jackie let out a groan. She lifted her head and grabbed the pair of scissors. "You know what, fuck this. I'm going to do it."

Harvar wasn't interested in what she was going to do until Jackie took the scissors and cut several strands off her hair. She was lucky that she'd missed the big chunk that she was aiming, as Jackie had closed her eyes prior to cutting her hair. "What're you doing?"

"Oh, so _now_ you're actually speaking full sentences," Jackie jibed, raising the scissors again for another try. "And just in case you can't see with those stupid visors on, I'm cutting my hair off."

"Why?"

"None of your business," The scissors were just seconds away from sawing off half of Jackie's long hair when it was jerked out of her hands.

"Hey!" Jackie glared at Harvar, who was now sitting beside her (carefully avoiding sitting on the flower petals), twirling the scissors around his index finger.

"I'll give it back to you if you tell me why you're cutting your hair off and I agree that it's not a stupid reason."

The now scissor-less Jackie glared daggers at Harvar, "You're better at sticking your nose into someone else's business than you think."

"Insulting me isn't going to work."

Jackie stared moodily at the ground in front of her, not saying a word. Harvar merely sat silently, still twirling the scissors around his finger as though to mock Jackie. His silence sent a clear message: 'I'm not going anywhere anytime soon'.

Finally, Jackie broke the silence with a barely audible, "I'm cutting my hair because it's getting in the way of missions."

Harvar paused, the scissors ceasing its spinning. He suddenly felt conscious of his own long haired, pulled back into a spiky ponytail. "Really now."

"Yeah," Jackie snorted, picking at the flower petals again. "We were supposed to take care of a kishin egg, but it turned out to be an ambush. There was around 5 kishin eggs, give or take. "

"And how exactly did your hair get involved in this?" Harvar raised an eyebrow at her, but Jackie didn't see the action as she was finding the petals very fascinating. Well, his visor would've blocked her sight anyways.

"The ambush wasn't a problem, Kim and I took care of them quickly enough. We thought it was over though, and we got careless. I transformed back into human form to collect the souls, but then the leader came out."

Harvar tensed at the mention of a leader behind the ambush, but Jackie didn't seem worried as she told him about the leader. Instead, she blew up about an entirely different thing. "He wasn't exactly impressive, ate a few more souls than the others, maybe, but he had a fan. A fucking fan! Can you believe it? Who uses a fan as a weapon? This isn't some world with a big-headed monkey born out of a rock riding around on a cloud. He's a psycho to think that a fan would be useful in a fight."

"But he was a kishin egg, and it's our job to take his soul. Screw his weapon choice. Kim told me to transform and I was about to, but then that fucking asshole used that stupid fan of his and my hair got in my eyes." When she got to this part of the story, Jackie glared resentfully at her raven colored hair, as though willing it to catch on fire. "That gave him an opening and he managed to cut Kim with the hilt of his fan. Apparently, he's stupid enough to use a fan to fight and attach a knife to the hilt of it."

"So there, it's all out in the open, I've bared my chest to you, blah blah blah. Can I have my scissors now?" Jackie extended her hand towards Harvar, palm up and reading to cut her hair off.

Harvar rolled the scissors around in his hand before shaking his head. "No. I still don't get what's the big deal. Kim's alright, and you got the soul, right?"

"Duh, I burned him into ashes. Idiot made his fan out of bamboo. But aren't you supposed to be agreeing with my choice? You're the one with the duty obsession!"

"I repeat, it's not an obsession," Harvar sighed. "And I think that your reason is stupid.

"How the fuck is it stupis?!" Jackie leapt to her feet, pointing an accusing finger at the guy who stole her scissors. "What if he'd cut Kim on the neck, or somewhere serious? A shoulder wound's okay; it's easily fixed, but not a cut throat!"

Sure, Kim was a witch with healing powers (not that anyone else knew), but she'd been tired after the fight. No matter how easy it'd been, it took considerable strength to swing Jackie around in her lantern form, shooting flames. (Maka didn't count; she was part of the monster trio). And plus, Kim and Jackie had to travel on foot due to some technical problems, which took quite a bit of energy from them. There was no way that Kim could've healed a serious injury in that state.

"First of all, I think that you're not thinking this through." Harvar stood up, plucking a red flower from the remaining three still clutched, forgotten, in Jackie's hand. "There're other solutions to your problem."

"Like what?"

Harvar sighed again, pointing at his own hair. "Ever heard of a hair tie?"

"That's not a permanent solution," Jackie said stubbornly, crossing her arms. "What if the enemy cuts the hair tie off or something?"

The boy across from her shrugged, replying smoothly, "Carry spares. I always do."

And to prove it, he brought out a box of spare hair ties from his pocket, showing it to Jackie.

Said girl stared at him with an incredulous look on her face. "Dude, are you sure that you're a guy? Even Maka doesn't carry around so many hair ties, and she has two pigtails."

Harvar scowled at her, shoving the box back into his pocket. "The point is, there're other solutions to your problem other than cutting your hair off."

Jackie was about to huff a retort back at him when he interrupted her. "But if it helps, I do like your long hair."

Harvar reached out with the red flower in his hand and placed it right behind her left ear. "And just so you know, that's a red Camellia flower."

**()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()**

The next time she saw Harvar, it was Jackie's turn to feel self-conscious about her own long hair. She just barely restrained herself from socking that smug look off of his face.


End file.
